Pure Pandemonium
Posted on 23 Mar 2026 @ 10:18am by Lieutenant Commander Elias Harlan
1,389 words; about a 7 minute read
Mission:
Arawyn’s Itchy Trigger Finger
Location: Main Engineering
Elias Harlan felt lighter than he had in years.
The weight that had settled in his chest twelve years ago—dense, unyielding, like a misaligned plasma manifold that refused to vent—hadn’t vanished overnight. But it had shifted. Cracked open. Let something breathe.
The conversation with Jorik had begun in the Deck 5 crew lounge, then migrated to Elias’s quarters. Six hours. Six hours of words that had never been spoken before, delivered in Jorik’s precise, measured cadence and Elias’s rougher, more halting one. No raised voices. No accusations flung like shrapnel. Just truth laid out on the table between them, item by item, like diagnostic logs being reviewed after a near-catastrophic failure.
Jorik had not only apologized—he had dissected the apology with the same clinical thoroughness he applied to a neural scan. He explained, in excruciating detail, the logic that had governed him then: risk as inefficiency, emotional exposure as vulnerability, love as a variable too volatile to integrate into the lattice without destabilizing the whole system. He had believed—genuinely, logically—that suppressing it was the only path to preservation. For both of them.
Elias had listened without interrupting, arms folded, back against the wall of his small quarters. The room still smelled faintly of replicated coffee and the metallic tang of his uniform jacket slung over the chair. When Jorik finished, Elias had taken his turn.
He told Jorik about the anger that had burned hot and bright for the first two years after the dissolution—anger at Jorik’s silence, at his own inability to make the Vulcan feel anything, at the way every unanswered subspace message had felt like another layer of insulation being added between them. He spoke of the hurt that followed, quieter but deeper: the hollow ache of waking up alone in a bunk that had once held two people, the way shipboard routine had become both armor and prison. And the desolation—the bone-deep certainty that something irreplaceable had been lost forever, and that he had somehow been the one to lose it.
He admitted, voice rougher than he intended, that he had ignored every one of Jorik’s 26 messages on purpose. Not out of spite. Out of survival.
“I couldn’t read them,” Elias said, staring at the deck plating between his boots. “Every time your name appeared in the inbox, it was like someone hit the reset button on the whole damn thing. The anger, the hurt, the way I still—still—missed you. I couldn’t do it again. So I didn’t open them. I just… deleted the notifications and kept moving.”
Jorik had listened without reaction—no flinch, no raised brow, no defensive posture. Just that steady, dark-eyed attention that had once driven Elias half-mad and now felt like the safest place in the quadrant.
When Elias finished, silence stretched between them—not awkward, not heavy, just… present. Jorik eventually spoke, voice quieter than usual.
“I did not understand the cost of my silence. I do now.”
Elias had laughed then—a short, tired sound that surprised him.
“Yeah. Well. We’re both idiots in our own way.”
Jorik had not contradicted him.
They had parted shortly after that—Jorik to his quarters, Elias to try and sleep before alpha shift. No promises. No grand declarations. Just an agreement, unspoken but clear: this was not closure. This was a door cracked open again. Whether they walked through it remained to be seen.
Elias woke the next morning to the soft chime of the ship’s morning cycle, feeling… rested. Not fixed. Not whole. But lighter. Like he’d finally vented a compartment that had been holding pressure for too long.
He showered, dressed, grabbed a quick raktajino from the replicator, and headed for main engineering—ready for whatever the day would throw at them.
He had no idea that shit was about to hit the fan.
Elias had just finished releasing Ryan Collingway from double-shift punishment—handshake, quick nod, back to business—when a voice called him over to check something on the diagnostic panel. He stepped to the right of the warp core, directly beneath the port plasma transfer conduit.
The peaceful morning ended in an instant.
An explosion tore from overhead—sharp, deafening, like a thunderclap inside the hull. The deck lurched violently; lights snapped out, plunging main engineering into emergency red strobes. The port PTC EPS tap detonated in a blinding white flash, hurling jagged chunks of bulkhead and conduit across the cavernous space like shrapnel.
One massive piece hurtled past the warp core—missing it by less than a meter—and slammed into Primary Coolant Stack #2. The vertical assembly shattered with a sickening crack; supercooled plasma condensate erupted in hissing geysers, freezing the air on contact.
No one had time to react. Safety systems engaged instantly: a shimmering force field snapped into place around the warp core, containing the breach. If it hadn’t, the coolant would have flash-frozen flesh and liquified organic tissue in seconds.
Elias pushed himself up from the deck, ears ringing, left shoulder screaming where something had clipped him on the fall. He staggered to the nearest engineering console and slapped the panel awake. The screen flared crimson under emergency power.
PORT PTC EPS TAP – CRITICAL FAILURE
PRIMARY COOLANT STACK #2 – BREACH
FORCE FIELD INTEGRITY: 89% AND FALLING
ENVIRONMENTAL PURGE INITIATED – 62% COMPLETE
Someone had already triggered the coolant purge—thank god—but the force field was degrading fast. If it collapsed before the purge finished venting the cryogenic mist from the containment zone, everyone in main engineering would be dead in under thirty seconds.
Elias’s fingers danced across the console, slamming the emergency warp core shutdown sequence. The panel lit up in confirmation—someone had beaten him to it again. Plasma began venting from the nacelles in controlled bursts, blue-white fire streaking into space behind the ship. The core’s whine dropped an octave, but the damage was already cascading.
Something had hit them. Hard. And that something had left an energy signature—sharp, directed, unmistakable. Weapons fire. The Arawyn had been running with shields down during routine cruise. No warning. No time to raise them.
A sickly green flicker danced across the overhead monitors—something burning on the upper decks. Engineering was sealed off now; the emergency containment bulkhead had slammed shut, cutting them from Deck 16 and the rest of the ship. No turbolifts, no Jefferies tubes, no comms through the main lines. They were isolated.
Elias’s jaw tightened. They needed to stabilize the equipment around the blown PTC tap before the cascade spread. One more overload, one more feedback loop, and the whole compartment would turn into a pressure cooker.
“Engineering to bridge,” he called, voice cutting through the klaxons as he moved toward one of the auxiliary stations.
Static hissed back. Nothing.
He pivoted. “We need to get those fires out. Caldwell—start rerouting the communication hardlines. I need to talk to the bridge.”
Nathan was already moving, PADD in one hand, toolkit in the other. He dropped to a knee beside the nearest access panel, prying it open with practiced speed.
Elias turned back to the console, rerouting auxiliary power to the force field grid. Integrity was down to 71%. Purge at 81%. Close. Too close.
Then he heard it—the high, rising whine of an overloaded EPS junction. Not the core. Not the tap. The auxiliary station Nathan was working on.
“Cal—” Elias started.
The console detonated in a white-hot flash. Shrapnel sprayed outward—durasteel fragments, sparking conduits, molten solder. Elias felt the impact before he registered the sound: a sharp, burning sting across his forehead and left temple, then the warm rush of blood sliding down his face.
The world tilted.
He staggered, one hand reaching instinctively for the console edge, but his fingers found nothing. Legs buckled. The deck rushed up to meet him.
Everything blacked out as he hit the plating, the last thing he registered the copper taste of blood in his mouth and the distant, frantic shouts of his team calling his name.
The klaxons kept screaming.
The force field flickered again.
And Elias Harlan lay still on the cold deck of main engineering, blood pooling beneath his head, unconscious in the red emergency light.
--
Lieutenant Commander Elias Harlan
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Arawyn
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